some writing about some things

Homebrew: Tallgrass Halcyon Unfiltered Wheat

Tallgrass Halcyon is a wheat beer from Tallgrass Brewing Company. It’s available as a Pro Series All Grain kit from Northern Brewer. These kits are interesting, they are recipes from the breweries themselves, so they should be pretty close a matching the real thing. I made a Surly Cynic partial mash a few years ago and it was quite good, and I was having a really hard time figuring out what I wanted to brew next. This beer should be ready in 4 weeks, and will be a great summer beer so I thought it would be good to try.

At 0 minutes, add Citra then cover and rest for 15 minutes, then cool. They call this a hop-bursting, giving the late addition hops a bit more time at the elevated temperature, but not boiling. This is supposed to add more aroma and more bitterness.

According to the mash calculators, I came up with the following:
Strike Water: 3.62 gallons at 163.48
Mash Out: 6.4 quarts (1.6 gallons) boiling
Sparge Water: 3.56 gallons at 170

Pre Boil Wort: 6.37 gallons

When I added the strike water, I only came up with a temperature of about 146. I ended up adding about another 3/4 gallon of 170+ water trying to get to 151. I finally did (but didn’t track my water totals well), and the rest finished at 149.5, so I lost very little heat in the mash. At mashout, I added 1.6 gallons of boiling water, but only hit 157. I realized later that the additional 3/4 gallon or so required more water at mashout to hit my temp, so I was a little low at mashout. I sparged the rest of the water (about 2.5 gallons) and got 6.5 gallons in a pretty easy sparge. I measured 1.052 OG at the end of the boil, a bit higher than target.

According to the calculator at http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/, I think I’m at 82.5% efficiency.

I bottled this at two weeks, and tried a bottle after one week. It was quite good, and at two weeks in the bottle it was even better. It has a good head, with a bit of lacing on the glass. I taste some grapefruit and other citrus. It’s a lighter straw color with a bit of cloudiness. For only 1.33 oz. of hops, it has a good bit of hoppiness. I’d love to try the real thing to compare. It looks like it’s available at Binny’s, but not any of my local ones, so I’ll have to maybe make a special trip.